I would like to think that you and I are real. But at this moment, we are both fictional characters in a game. It’s mostly a text game I admit, but as I’ve said before, I see Twitter as a game, and PLNs as a Guild and sporadic hashtag, back channels are a Raid Group.
Sometimes the sensations of having a liberty of choice online, amount simply to small added features, neat little compensations for the limitations in actual choices allowed in life. So as players those who control of the game (software providers) present possibilities (rules) to the player in order to give the impression that a player can influence the game in a direction. Humans like puzzles that they can take up or quit and adventures that have low-risk and high sense of drama. These games require hardly any motivation to play and the rules are very simple. Players who cannot right away see through the limited merit of this game may be more inclined to play, and accept that as a game when presented with wins and loses. For example, not all Tweets are well received, some Tweets result in getting help. It changes the paradigm because playing by by playing the game, it is obvious the results are completely unpredictable – unlike things such as workshops and professional development, where there is limited freedom of choice and no randomness. The goal of the fellow players is usually to make the confrontation of these obstacles enjoyable – and that makes people feel inclined to play again. Most of all, we are talking about a persistent social game with millions of players.
Or you can think it’s just the read/write web, but rapped up is the fact that read/write and Web2.0 are two variations of the same game. There are millions of players, yet a small percentage of game-masters, the trick is, like the Truman Show, is to notice the errors and eventually beat the game … to no longer submit to someone else’s view of the world and to see the one you can create. No you’ve mastered how to play, you can design a better game – and that is probably how games will eventually finish of the original Edu-game “Skinner-topia”.
Playable 